Sonos ZP90 vs. Simple Audio RoomPlayer II vs. Logitech Squezzebox?

Audio Gear Talk
1

I have just started using Roon and I am looking at how to get the best out of my current setup by introducing a music streamer as a Roon endpoint.

I have mostly ALAC and FLAC CD quality (16/44) music but I do have a few dozen hi-res (24/48-96) multi-channel albums.

I currently have an Apple TV connected to a Yamaha RX-V671 Home Theater Amp. The Yamaha supports 192kHz / 24-bit DACs for all channels. AS far as I can tell, with this setup I can only stream CD quality audio to the Yamaha due to the limitations of AirPlay.

I can pick up a 2nd hand Sonos ZP90, Logitech Squeezebox Touch or Simple Audio Roomplayer II reasonably cheaply. My question is, which would be the better? Can I even use the Roomplayer with Roon?

I realise that all of the above music steamers are end of life and no longer supported by the vendor but looking for an interim solution to hopefully stream hi-res audio and get some experience using Roon.

Any thoughts or experiences people are willing to share will be greatly appreciated.

2

Look for used Bryston BDP 1 or Pi.

3

You can get a RPi in a nice case for $50-75. Takes a little setup, but there are good instructions available online. The Pi can play anything.

You can even add a touchscreen and do a full on Logitech Touch, as it were. Much better than buying an old SB.
The Bryston is a Pi in a nice case with PS internal and a DAC. Nothing wrong with it, but that’s what it is.

for use with Roon:

As Touch:

4

Not only is it really an overpriced Pi the Manic Moose software is downright god awful.
An experience I wish to never repeat!
Sure it sounded good when I finally got it working how I wanted/ expected it to but way too much hard work.

Stick with a regular Pi.

5

Does not look like it is compatible with Roon.

I have and still use Squeezebox hardware and love it, but, I don’t think it does multi-channel.

If you don’t want to setup a Pi, you can get a good pre built with, Like a Digione, which will take Ethernet in, and present a coax out to plug into your amp, handles up to 24/196 and would be a Roon Ready endpoint, pretty much plug and play.

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6

The BDP Pi are overpriced just like much of the HiFi stuff we buy and MM is certainly as spartan an interface as you will find, but the one I have works. But I will put the MPD SQ up against The Roons any day and the RadioParadise app blows Roons implementation clean out of the water. Support from Bryston is renowned and the MM interface will control an external DVD drive for burning CDs to disk. The gripes on the BDP Pi are legit, proly one of the reasons its been retired, to costly to make and not enough sales. But If you can pick one up used its a deal.

7

Not my recollection…lol
I found Manic Moose to be completely non intuitive to say the least and took a lot of work to get it to play nicely with my network and a simple USB storage drive.
In the end I preferred using the BDP via DLNA and controlling with Bubble UpNp, much less painful.
But thats my experience, YMMV.

8

it will do multichannel, but only with dts and Dolby digital.

The easiest way will be to use a RPI with Picoreplayer and Roon Bridge on it (there exists a repository for it), which is able to output audio (until eight channels with 24/192) through HDMI.

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